


Carry That Weight

by crimsonepitaph



Series: 2017 Writing Project [5]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 22:36:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11656113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonepitaph/pseuds/crimsonepitaph
Summary: It's been a little more than a year since Jared and Jensen have returned from the mission that changed their lives. But there are more battles to be fought, even on home front...





	Carry That Weight

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's note #1:** Title is from a Beatles song.  
>  **Author's note #2:** I am very grateful to [borgmama1of5](http://archiveofourown.org/users/borgmama1of5), who kicks every story I send her into shape. Huuugs!  
>  **Author's note #3:** This story is a timestamp for "Once there was a way back homeward". It might not make much sense if you have not read that first.

_She’s brunette, petite, warm eyes. Young. Not military._

_All in all, not what Jared had expected. These things – they usually bring in the big guns._

_The doctors with ten titles to their names, the rank, the whole enchilada._

_“Sergeant Major?” she asks, sound anchored in a smile, eyes traveling down to his name patch. “I’m Dr. Cortese. Come on in. I hear we have to talk.”_

_So Jared goes._

_A psychiatrist’s office is more unsettling than facing a dozen hostiles unarmed._

 

_~_

 

_“How are your fingers?”_

_Jared shrugs. “Good.”_

_“Your run time?”_

_“Better.”_

_She raises an eyebrow._

_“And your head?”_

_“Ain’t that why I’m coming to you, doc?”_

_She doesn’t laugh._

_“You’re here because it’s mandatory. Cooperating is not.”_

_Jared smiles, and it feels so wrong. It feels like he should be screaming, hitting the walls. But he can’t. He stays silent, and the minutes of the hour pass, too slow, too fast._

_She doesn’t ask._

_Jared doesn’t talk._

_Jared understands why they sent him to Cortese – and why she’s so good at this._

 

_~_

 

“Does it help?” Jensen asks.

He’s standing in the doorway of the bathroom, uniform still on.

Jared wipes his mouth, looks up.

He doesn’t know what to say.

It does, in a strange way. But he understands – this…this is not the best proof of that.

“Jared – it’s the third time. You go there, and you come back like this – like you can’t –“

“I’m okay.”

Jensen’s eyes surveying the bathroom say something different.

“It’s just –“ Jared starts, unsure. They don’t do this. They talk, but they never ask something of the other. They never ask for comfort. They never ask to be told everything is all right. And that’s exactly what Jared’s doing now.

It goes against his instincts – and yet, it comes from the deepest part of himself.

“Chris,” he manages to say, stomach roiling at the word again. “Chris. She says – she says it’s not my fault.”

Jensen inhales.

“She’s smart,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the tub – close to Jared, but far enough.

Jared laughs with mirth.

“Yeah.”

Jensen searches his eyes.

“She doesn’t know about Chad, does she?”

“No.”

“You haven’t told her?”

Jared shakes his head.

“I can’t.”

That’s why. That’s why he’s puking his guts up after each meeting with Cortese. There’s all these images running through his head...and he wants to get them out.

Chris… maybe that wasn’t his fault.

_Did you ever think, Sergeant, that maybe there are people out there that want to save their fellow officers as much as you do?_

Maybe Chris knew what choice he was making, jumping on that grenade. Jared understands it – at a rational, conscious level, he does. But, maybe, it should have been him. He was team leader, and he had nobody to mourn him.

Except Jensen. Sandy. Alika. Ayden. Steve.

Cortese – she’s good at arguing with Jared. She smiles at him while he’s talking. Patient, soothing.  And then, with the same calm, she demolishes every argument Jared brings. When Jared told her about Chris, it took about the time Jared blinked for her to come up with an array of people that would miss him.

And slowly, Jared starts to believe.

He wants to tell. The rest. About Chad. Because that…that’s a different story than Chris. That had been Jared. He had put the bullet in Chad’s head. Mercy killing – Chad’s insides were spilling in the dirt, and what Jared tells himself is that he spared his best friend moments of agony.

And maybe there’s an explanation for this, too, maybe there’s a twisted logic to it. But how can it change the facts of it? How can it change that Jared’s an executioner – that he’s a man who has lost count of the number of people he’s killed?

Jared wants to be free of it. He wants to believe there’s good in him.

But he can’t.

Jared feels sick at the thought of forgiving himself for all he’s done. He deserves feeling like this. He deserves the pain. He deserved what had been done to him.

But he doesn’t want to feel it.

For the first time he wonders if there’s something on the other side. Can he be different? Can he ever move past what haunts him?

He has someone to come home to. Jared has someone who understands. Who puts a hand on his during the sleepless nights when he stares at the ceiling. Who doesn’t ask when Jared feels like bursting, when his memories suffocate him.

Jensen lets Jared be.

He doesn’t tell Jared he’s worthless.

He tells Jared “I love you” countless times. Even after all he’s seen Jared doing.

And that – that’s why Jared wants to fight.

But he feels like he can’t. He’s stuck. Two sides of him, and still, not enough.

 

_~_

 

_“You ready to tell me the real stuff, Sergeant?”_

_Jared stops, looks at Dr. Cortese surprised._

_“You have a look in your eyes.”_

_“Crazy? Jensen tells me that.”_

_“No. Determined.”_

_Jared laughs. “Yeah, well…guess you’ll have to work with that.”_

 

_~_

 

_“You’d do anything for your team. And for your country.”_

_Jared looks down. He doesn’t want to hear it – why does she do it? Doesn’t she see? He’s not the hero in the story, no matter how much he’d like to be._  

_“Jared, Look at me.”_

_Jared does._

_She’s beautiful. She’s strong._

_How can she understand the ramblings of a broken mind? How can she look at him when Jared tells her what he did?_

_“Sergeant…it’s not the courage that makes a soldier. It’s the fear. It’s the mistakes, the difficult choices…all the past. You make the choice to carry on. You make it every day.”_

 

_~_

 

_When Jensen falls down, in the milliseconds it takes Jared to process what’s happening – because Jared knows, he sees –it feels –_

_Like the world fades. To a ringing, to that moment of precipice, of too much emotion, of fear, too much of it. That’s the only thing he feels. Fear. Numbness._

_Jared yells, desperately, uselessly. Jensen’s name._

_Jensen falls. He’s thrown through the fog of dust and sand by the impact._

_And Jared’s hearing comes back. The fear fades, and it’s just – it is nothing. He can’t feel, nor does he want to. He moves, mechanically, because that’s what he should do, because that’s the training, because there never was another option._

_He doesn’t move towards Jensen, initially. He moves to another spot, from where he can signal Steve to cover him. Steve does without a second thought._

_Then Jared runs – and he doesn’t check on Jensen, doesn’t put his hands on his face, doesn’t look in his eyes when he gets to his position – he just drags Jensen behind a broken down Humvee._

_He can’t breathe. He’s going to explode into a million little pieces, nonexistence, because a world without Jensen – it just can’t exist. Jared forces himself to look at the limp body beside him._

_Jensen’s uniform is full of blood, spreading out from his chest in irregular rivulets. Dirty crimson blood – the war zone leaves its mark on everything, in all the little grains of rusty sand mingling with the red pulsing from the wound. Jensen’s eyes – they’re closed, and Jared s heart stutters._

_Shouldn’t there have been more than this?_

_Shouldn’t –_

_How can it have been just moments ago Jensen’s eyes had been so green, so full of life? And now –_

_Jared inhales, tries to hold back the tears, the screams, the vomit at the sight of so much blood on Jensen._

_He manages to do it. He presses down on Jensen’s chest instead, tries to stop the bleeding._

_It’s mechanical. There’s no point to it._

He wakes up covered in sweat, thoughts racing in his head  – his mind and his body don’t realize he’s awake. The panic, a coldness that trickles down his chest, spreads, numbs his fingers and his palms. His thoughts – they don’t know what to do. They run, uselessly, hitting the walls of a space too small, reverberating, making Jared consciously measure his breath.

_One._

_Two._

It’s a dream. One Jared has had too many times in the last year. Three, and four – at five, Jared understands that Jensen’s not dead. He’s on assignment, four thousand miles away, and Jared can’t touch him, can’t find the warmth in beautiful green eyes.

The demons  – they’re not going away tonight.

 

~

 

Jared tries to do his job. But fifteen hours of accumulated sleep throughout the week since Jensen left to God knows where has Jared doing it mechanically, counting beats, watching the recruits without seeing what they’re doing.

_Padalecki, Jared. Drill Sergeant, United States Army._

That’s who he is now. Broken mind, broken body.

He’s never going into the field again. At least, not with an elite team. No more responsibility for the lives of his team, no more adrenaline rush, no more decisions.

A good thing, maybe.

So he trains the newbies. Wonders which of them will make choices under fire that get others killed.

Wonders if Steve will keep Jensen alive.

 

 ~

 

_Jared’s afraid. He always has been, of the big, important stuff. A firefight was easy. Worst case, you were dead._

_Getting tortured…less so. But manageable. It’s physical. Something Jared can compartmentalize._

_But the fear? The feeling that it’s never going away? That this is who he is, that his mind will betray him every chance it gets, painting his thoughts with Jensen’s blood?_

_Jared’s not there. He can’t –_

_“You’re the same man you were, Jared. Stronger, even.“_

_Dr. Cortese’s voice is soothing._

_Jared listens to it, tries to etch it over all his scars, weave it through his most desperate thoughts._

_“You’re still a soldier. You’ve always found strength to face your adversaries. And you just have to find it now, too. Find the strength to face yourself, and to believe and trust the man you are seeing.”_

 

~

 

His nightmare has come true.

Aldis finds him outside the base hospital. Jared’s shaking, fingers reaching for a cigarette in the pockets of his cargo pants.

“Boss.”

Jared raises his head.

He wants to say – _not your boss anymore, Hodge._

But he knows what Aldis meant.

Jared searches Hodge’s features for clues to what happened.

“The chopper made fast time, and the field medic that rode with us did a good job.”

Jared nods, not sure he can do anything else.

“One shot,” Hodge carries on, voice strained. “He only took one shot. The rest were in his vest.”

“What difference does it make if it kills him anyway?”

Hodge has no answer to that.

Hodge leaves, though not before putting a reassuring hand on Jared’s shoulder. It doesn’t help. Jared feels his knees buckling, he feels himself crumbling under the warm touch. But – he can’t.

Jared goes through an entire pack of cigarettes, watching clouds giving way to rays of sun over the army base. His thoughts drift through the smoke, fall and rise in time with his breath. When he’s done, there’s no more _him_ left.

Just … _strength._

The strength born out of a moment that’s bigger than any thought.

He goes back inside the hospital.

The doctor comes out hours after that. Jared vaguely listens to him explain Jensen’s chances “…next 48 hours critical, but if he makes it through…” and all the while Jensen’s words play on a loop in his mind.  

_We fight for it. We give everything we have. That’s the only way, and I know you understand that, because I know who you are._

_Yeah_ , Jared thinks. _We’ll fight._ _We always have._

 


End file.
